The Internet and the World Wide Web (WWW) have met an increasing demand for multimedia content and e-commerce transaction services. Consumers are becoming more reliant on the Internet and the WWW to obtain information on products and services and to order and pay for them. Using web browsers to locate such information, however, is often deferred until after a consumer makes an initial decision to locate and order a product or service on-line. For example, a consumer may be listening to a broadcast song and decide to purchase a compact disc or concert tickets by the artist of the song. On-line shopping for these items typically occurs at a later time when the consumer has an opportunity to use a personal computer with on-line access and the time to search for the item via a web browser.
A need exists for a system which provides information to a consumer for products and services related to distributed or broadcast content and facilitates e-commerce transactions to order products or services associated with content as it is being received. A need also exists for a user device with which to receive the content and information indicating products or services relating to the received content, as well as to request and place orders for these items.
A need also exists for personalization of content delivery to reduce the need for consumers to browse on-line for content, and products and services that are of interest to them. In addition, a need exists to provide different entities responsible for making content and related products and services available to consumers with greater incentive to do so. These entities can include, for example, content providers, broadcast stations that employ programming to provide streams of content, and broadband providers providing the network or other transmission path for the content.